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Folk song
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music was defined in several ways: as music transmitted orally, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers. It has been contrasted with commercial and classical styles. It has become increasingly common to refer to this type of music as traditional music. Starting in the mid-20th century a new form of popular folk music evolved from traditional music. This process and period is called the folk revival and reached a peak in the 1960s. The most common name for this new form of music is also "folk music", but is often called "folk revival music" or "contemporary folk music" to make the distinction.http://folkmusic.about.com/od/glossary/g/FolkMusic.htm About.com definition This type of folk music also includes fusion genres such as folk rock, electric folk, and others. While contemporary folk music is a genre generally distinct from traditional music, it often shares the same English name, performers and venues as traditional music; even individual songs may be a blend of the two. The article on this subject can be found at Folk music. Origins and definitions A consistent definition of traditional folk music is elusive. Taken literally, the term could encompass most of the music of the world, but most definitions are, to varying degrees, more specific, often using the term to mean traditional folk music. The terms folk music, folk song, and folk dance are comparatively recent expressions. They are extensions of the term folk lore, which was coined in 1846 by the English antiquarian William Thoms to describe "the traditions, customs, and superstitions of the uncultured classes."Percy Scholes, The Oxford Companion to Music, OUP 1977, article "Folk Song". The term is further derived from the German expression ''Volk'', in the sense of "the people as a whole" as applied to popular and national music by Johann Gottfried Herder and the German Romantics over half a century earlier.A.L.Lloyd, Folk Song in England, Panther Arts, 1969, p. 13. Traditional music also includes most indigenous music Throughout most of human prehistory and history, listening to recorded music was not possible, and the work of economic production was often manual and communal. Music was made by common people during both their work and leisure. Manual labour often included singing by the workers, which served several practical purposes. It reduced the boredom of repetitive tasks, it kept the rhythm during synchronized pushes and pulls, and it set the pace of many activities such as planting, weeding, reaping, threshing, weaving, and milling. In leisure time, singing and playing musical instruments were common forms of entertainment and history-telling—even more common than today, when electrically enabled technologies and widespread literacy make other forms of entertainment and information-sharing competitive.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hr9FP93o8Ro Alan Lomax's 1947 Documentary narrated by Pete Seeger A literary interest in the popular ballad was not new; it dates back to Thomas Percy and William Wordsworth. English Elizabethan and Stuart composers had often evolved their music from folk themes, the classical suite was based upon stylised folk-dances and Joseph Haydn's use of folk melodies is noted. But the emergence of the term "folk" coincided with an "outburst of national feeling all over Europe" that was particularly strong at the edges of Europe, where national identity was most asserted. Nationalist composers emerged in Eastern Europe, Russia, Scandinavia, Spain and Britain: the music of Dvorak, Smetana, Grieg, Rimsky-Korsakov, Brahms, Liszt, de Falla, Wagner, Sibelius, Vaughan Williams, Bartók and many others drew upon folk melodies. The English term "folklore", to describe traditional music and dance, entered the vocabulary of many continental European nations, each of which had its folk-song collectors and revivalists. However, despite the assembly of an enormous body of work over some two centuries, there is still no certain definition of what folk music (or folklore, or the folk) is.Richard Middleton, Studying Popular Music, Philadelphia: Open University Press (1990/2002). ISBN 0-335-15275-9, p. 127. Folk music may tend to have certain characteristics but it cannot clearly be differentiated in purely musical terms. One meaning often given is that of "old songs, with no known composers",Ronald D. Cohen Folk music: the basics (CRC Press, 2006), pp. 1-2. another is that of music that has been submitted to an evolutionary "process of oral transmission.... the fashioning and re-fashioning of the music by the community that give it its folk character."International Folk Music Council definition (1954/5), given in Lloyd (1969) and Scholes (1977). Such definitions depend upon "(cultural) processes rather than abstract musical types...", upon "continuity and oral transmission...seen as characterizing one side of a cultural dichotomy, the other side of which is found not only in the lower layers of feudal, capitalist and some oriental societies but also in 'primitive' societies and in parts of 'popular cultures'."Charles Seeger (1980), citing the approach of Redfield (1947) and Dundes (1965), quoted in Middleton (1990) p.127. For Scholes, as for Cecil Sharp and Béla Bartók,A. L. Lloyd, Folk Song in England, Panther Arts, 1969, pp. 14-5. there was a sense of the music of the country as distinct from that of the town. Folk music was already "seen as the authentic expression of a way of life now past or about to disappear (or in some cases, to be preserved or somehow revived),"Middleton 1990, p. 127. particularly in "a community uninfluenced by art music" and by commercial and printed song. Lloyd rejected this in favour of a simple distinction of economic class yet for him true folk music was, in Charles Seeger's words, "associated with a lower class in societies which are culturally and socially stratified, that is, which have developed an elite, and possibly also a popular, musical culture." In these terms folk music may be seen as part of a "schema comprising four musical types: 'primitive' or 'tribal'; 'elite' or 'art'; 'folk'; and 'popular'."Charles Seeger (1980) quoted in Middleton (1990) p. 127. Revivalists' opinions differed over the origins of folk music: it was said by some to be art music changed and probably debased by oral transmission, by others to reflect the character of the race that produced it. Traditionally, the cultural transmission of folk music is through playing by ear, although notation may also be used. The competition of individual and collective theories of composition set different demarcations and relations of folk music with the music of tribal societies on the one hand and of "art" and "court" music on the other. The traditional cultures that did not rely upon written music or had less social stratification could not be readily categorized. In the proliferation of popular music genres, some music became categorised as "World music" and "Roots music". ]] The distinction between "authentic" folk and national and popular song in general has always been loose, particularly in America and Germany - for example popular songwriters such as Stephen Foster could be termed "folk" in America.Example given by both Scholes (1977) and Lloyd (1969). The International Folk Music Council definition allows that the term "can also be applied to music which has originated with an individual composer and has subsequently been absorbed into the unwritten, living tradition of a community. But the term does not cover a song, dance, or tune that has been taken over ready-made and remains unchanged."Quoted by both Scholes (1977) and Lloyd (1969). The post–World War II folk revival in America and in Britain started a new genre, contemporary folk music and brought an additional meaning to the term folk music. The popularity of "contemporary folk" recordings caused the appearance of the category "Folk" in the Grammy Awards of 1959: in 1970 the term was dropped in favor of "Best Ethnic or Traditional Recording (including Traditional Blues)", while 1987 brought a distinction between "Best Traditional Folk Recording" and "Best Contemporary Folk Recording". The term "folk", by the start of the 21st century, could cover singer song-writers, such as Donovan and Bob Dylan, who emerged in the 1960s and much more. Characteristics From a historical perspective, traditional music had these characteristics: * It was transmitted through an oral tradition. :Before the twentieth century, ordinary farm workers and factory workers were illiterate. They acquired songs by memorising them. Primarily, this was not mediated by books, recorded or transmitted media. Singers may extend their repertoire using broadsheets, song books or CDs, but these secondary enhancements are of the same character as the primary songs experienced in the flesh. * The music was often related to national culture. :It was culturally particular - from a particular region or culture. In the context of an immigrant group, folk music acquires an extra dimension for social cohesion. It is particularly conspicuous in the United States, where Polish-Americans, Irish-Americans and Asian-Americans strive to emphasise differences from the mainstream. They will learn songs and dances that originate in the countries where their grandparents came from. * They commemorate historical and personal events. :On certain days of the year, such as Easter, May Day and Christmas hoe, particular songs celebrate the yearly cycle. Weddings, birthdays and funerals may also be noted with songs, dances and special costumes. Religious festivals often have a folk music component. Choral music at these events brings children and non-professional singers to participate in a public arena, giving an emotional bonding that is unrelated to the aesthetic qualities of the music. As a side-effect, the following characteristics are sometimes present: * Lack of copyright on songs :There are hundreds of songs from the nineteenth century have known authors. However, they have continued in oral tradition, to the point where they are classified as "Traditional", for purposes of music publishing. This has become much less frequent since the 1970s. Today, almost every folk song that is recorded is credited with an arrangement e.g. "Trad arr Dylan". * Fusion of cultures :In the same way that people can have a mixed background, with parents originating in different continents, so too music can be a blend of influences. A particular rhythmic pattern, or a characteristic instrument, is enough to give a traditional feel to music, even when it has been composed recently. It is easy to recognise the presence of a bagpipe or a tabla in a piece of music. The young are usually much less offended by the dilution or adaptation of songs this way. Equally an electric guitar can be added to an old song. It is a matter of personal taste as to whether this is an enhancement to the music, or a cheap gimmick. The relevant factors may include instrumentation, tunings, voicings, phrasing, subject matter, and even production methods. * Non-commercial :Celebrations of cultural identity are occasionally performed without any profit motive. The absence of financial reward for the organiser was much more common in the past. Subject matter Apart from instrumental music that forms a part of traditional music, especially dance music traditions, much traditional music is vocal music, since the instrument that makes such music is usually handy. As such, most traditional music has meaningful lyrics. Narrative verse looms large in the traditional music of many cultures. This encompasses such forms as traditional epic poetry, much of which was meant originally for oral performance, sometimes accompanied by instruments. Many epic poems of various cultures were pieced together from shorter pieces of traditional narrative verse, which explains their episodic structure and often their ''in medias res plot developments. Other forms of traditional narrative verse relate the outcomes of battles and other tragedies or natural disasters. Sometimes, as in the triumphant Song of Deborah found in the Biblical Book of Judges, these songs celebrate victory. Laments for lost battles and wars, and the lives lost in them, are equally prominent in many traditions; these laments keep alive the cause for which the battle was fought. The narratives of traditional songs often also remember folk heroes such as John Henry to Robin Hood. Some traditional song narratives recall supernatural events or mysterious deaths. Hymns and other forms of religious music are often of traditional and unknown origin. Western musical notation was originally created to preserve the lines of Gregorian chant, which before its invention was taught as an oral tradition in monastic communities. Traditional songs such as Green grow the rushes, O present religious lore in a mnemonic form. In the Western world, Christmas carols and other traditional songs preserve religious lore in song form. Work songs frequently feature call and response structures, and are designed to enable the labourers who sing them to coordinate their efforts in accordance with the rhythms of the songs. They are frequently, but not invariably, composed. In the American armed forces, a lively tradition of jody calls ("Duckworth chants") are sung while soldiers are on the march. Professional sailors made use of a large body of sea shanties. Love poetry, often of a tragic or regretful nature, prominently figures in many folk traditions. Nursery rhymes and nonsense verse also are frequent subjects of traditional songs. Variations Music transmitted by word of mouth through a community will, in time, develop many variants, because this kind of transmission cannot produce word-for-word and note-for-note accuracy. Indeed, many traditional singers are quite creative and deliberately modify the material they learn. For example the words of "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day" (Roud 975) are known from a broadside in the Bodleian Library.Bodley24 OX.ac.uk The date is almost certainly before 1900, and it seems to be Irish. In 1958 the song was recorded in Canada (My Name is Pat and I'm Proud of That). Jeannie Robertson made the next recorded version in 1961. She has changed it to make reference to "Jock Stewart", one of her relatives, and there are no Irish references. In 1976 Archie Fisher deliberately altered the song to remove the reference to a dog being shot. In 1985 The Pogues took it full circle by restoring all the Irish references. Because variants proliferate naturally, it is naïve to believe that there is such a thing as the single "authentic" version of a ballad such as "Barbara Allen". Field researchers in traditional song (see below) have encountered countless versions of this ballad throughout the English-speaking world, and these versions often differ greatly from each other. None can reliably claim to be the original, and it is quite possible that whatever the "original" was, it ceased to be sung centuries ago. Any version can lay an equal claim to authenticity, so long as it is truly from a traditional singing community and not the work of an outside editor. Cecil Sharp had an influential idea about the process of folk variation: he felt that the competing variants of a traditional song would undergo a process akin to biological natural selection: only those new variants that were the most appealing to ordinary singers would be picked up by others and transmitted onward in time. Thus, over time we would expect each traditional song to become aesthetically ever more appealing — it would be collectively composed to perfection, as it were, by the community. Regional forms While the loss of traditional music in the face of the rise of popular music is a worldwide phenomenon, it is not one occurring at a uniform rate throughout the world. While even many tribal cultures are losing traditional music and folk cultures, the process is most advanced "where industrialisation and commercialisation of culture are most advanced".Alison Vardy, et al., About Traditional Music Page, Celtic Harp Sheet Music site. Accessed 16 February 2007. Yet in nations or regions where traditional music is a badge of cultural or national identity, the loss of traditional music can be slowed; this is held to be true, for instance in the case of Bangladesh, Hungary, India, Ireland, Latvia, Turkey, Portugal, Brittany, and Galicia, Greece and Crete all of which retain their traditional music to some degree, in some such areas the decline of traditional music and loss of traditions has been reversed. Fieldwork and scholarship 19th century Europe Starting in the 19th century, interested people - academics and amateur scholars - started to take note of what was being lost, and there grew various efforts aimed at preserving the music of the people. One such effort was the collection by Francis James Child in the late 19th century of the texts of over three hundred ballads in the English and Scots traditions (called the Child Ballads). Throughout the 1960s and early to middle 1970s, American scholar Bertrand Harris Bronson published an exhaustive, four-volume collection of the then-known variations of both the texts and tunes associated with what came to be known as the Child Canon. He also advanced some significant theories concerning the workings of oral-aural tradition. Contemporaneously with Child came the Reverend Sabine Baring-Gould, and later and more significantly Cecil Sharp who worked in the early 20th century to preserve a great body of English rural traditional song, music and dance, under the aegis of what became and remains the English Folk Dance and Song Society (EFDSS). Sharp also worked in America, recording the traditional songs of the Appalachian Mountains in 1916-1918 in collaboration with Maud Karpeles and Olive Dame Campbell. Campbell and Sharp are represented under other names by actors in the modern movie "Songcatcher". Similar activity was also under way in other countries. One of the most extensive was perhaps the work done in Riga by Krisjanis Barons who between the years between 1894 and 1915 published six volumes including the texts of 217 996 Latvian folk songs; the Latvju dainas. Around this time, composers of classical music developed a strong interest in traditional song collecting, and a number of outstanding composers carried out their own field work on traditional song. These included Percy Grainger and Ralph Vaughan Williams in England and Béla Bartók in Hungary. These composers, like many of their predecessors, incorporated traditional material into their classical compositions. The Latviju dainas are extensively used in the classical choral works of Andrejs Jurāns, Jānis Cimze, and Emilis Melngailis. North America In North America, during the 1930s and 1940s, the Library of Congress worked through the offices of traditional music collectors Robert Winslow Gordon, Alan Lomax and others to capture as much North American field material as possible. People who studied traditional song sometimes hoped that their work would restore traditional music to the people. For instance, Cecil Sharp campaigned, with some success, to have English traditional songs (in his own heavily edited and expurgated versions) to be taught to school children. One theme that runs through the great period of scholarly traditional song collection is the tendency of certain members of the "folk", who were supposed to be the object of study, to become scholars and advocates themselves. For example, Jean Ritchie was the youngest child of a large family from Viper, Kentucky that had preserved many of the old Appalachian traditional songs. Ritchie, living in a time when the Appalachians had opened up to outside influence, was university educated and ultimately moved to New York City, where she made a number of classic recordings of the family repertoire and published an important compilation of these songs. (See also Hedy West) National and regional forms Africa , thumb piano or mbira]] Africa is a vast continent and its regions and nations have distinct musical traditions. The music of North Africa for the most part has a different history from Sub-Saharan African music traditions.GCSE Music - Edexcel Areas of Study, Coordination Group Publications, UK, 2006, page 34, quoting examination board syllabus. The music and dance forms of the African diaspora, including African American music and many Caribbean genres like soca, calypso and Zouk; and Latin American music genres like the samba, rumba, salsa; and other clave (rhythm)-based genres, were founded to varying degrees on the music of African slaves, which has in turn influenced African popular music. Asia , baul singer at Nine Lives concert, 2009.]] Many Asian civilisations distinguish between art/court/classical styles and "folk" music, though cultures that do not depend greatly upon notation and have much anonymous art music must distinguish the two in different ways from those suggested by western scholars. For example the late Alam Lohar is a good example of a classical South Asian folk singer of great repute. Australia Folk song traditions were taken to Australia by early settlers from Britain and Ireland and gained particular foothold in the rural outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales written in the form of bush ballads often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia in The Bush, and the authors and performers are often referred to as bush bards.Kerry O'Brien December 10, 2003 7:30 Report, abc.net.au The 19th century was the golden age of bush ballads. Several collectors have catalogued the songs including John Meredith whose recording in the 1950s became the basis of the collection in the National Library of Australia. The songs tell personal stories of life in the wide open country of Australia. Typical subjects include mining, raising and droving cattle, sheep shearing, wanderings, war stories, the 1891 Australian shearers' strike, class conflicts between the landless working class and the squatters (landowners), and outlaws such as Ned Kelly, as well as love interests and more modern fare such as trucking.G. Smith, Singing Australian: A History of Folk and Country Music (Pluto Press Australia, 2005), p. 2. The most famous bush ballad is "Waltzing Matilda", which has been called "the unofficial national anthem of Australia".Who'll come a waltzing Matilda with me?", The National Library of Australia, retrieved 14 March 2008. Europe Celtic traditional music Celtic music is a term used by artists, record companies, music stores and music magazines to describe a broad grouping of musical genres that evolved out of the folk musical traditions of the Celtic peoples of Western Europe. These traditions include Irish, Scottish, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Breton traditions. Galician music is often included, though significant research showing that this has any close musical relationship is lacking. Brittany's Folk revival began in the 1950s with the "bagadoù" and the "kan-ha-diskan" before growing to world fame through Alan Stivell's work since the mid-1960s. In Ireland, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (although its members were all Irish-born, the group became famous while based in New York's Greenwich Village), The Dubliners, Clannad, Planxty, The Chieftains, The Pogues, The Irish Rovers, and a variety of other folk bands have done much over the past few decades to revitalise and re-popularise Irish traditional music. These bands were rooted, to a greater or lesser extent, in a living tradition of Irish music and benefited from the efforts of artists such as Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy. Eastern Europe During the Communist era national folk dancing was actively promoted by the state. Dance troupes from Russia and Poland toured Western Europe from about 1937 to 1990. The Red Army Choir recorded many albums. A female choir from Bulgarian State Radio recorded "Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares" which was promoted by British DJ John Peel. The Hungarian group Muzsikás played numerous American tours and participated in the Hollywood movie The English Patient while the singer Márta Sebestyén worked with the band Deep Forest. The Hungarian táncház movement, started in the 1970s, involves strong cooperation between musicology experts and enthusiastic amateurs. However, traditional Hungarian folk music and folk culture barely survived in some rural areas of Hungary, and it has also begun to disappear among the ethnic Hungarians in Transylvania. The táncház movement revived broader folk traditions of music, dance, and costume together and created a new kind of music club. The movement spread to ethnic Hungarian communities around the world. Today, almost every major city in the U.S. and Australia has its own Hungarian folk music and folk dance group; there are also groups in Japan, Hong Kong, Argentina and Western Europe. Balkan music , Republic of Macedonia]] The Balkan folk music was influenced by the mingling of Balkan ethnic groups in the period of Ottoman Empire. It comprises the music of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Bulgaria, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Romania, Slovenia, Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Turkey, the historical states of Yugoslavia or the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro and geographical regions such as Thrace. Some music is characterised by complex rhythm. An important part of the whole Balkan folk music is the music of the local Romani ethnic minority. Nordic folk music Latin America North America American traditional music is also called roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American music. The music is considered American either because it is native to the United States or because it developed there, out of foreign origins, to such a degree that it struck musicologists as something distinctly new. It is considered "roots music" because it served as the basis of music later developed in the United States, including rock and roll, contemporary folk music, rhythm and blues, and jazz. Media Traditional revivals "Folk revival" most commonly refers to two particular phenomena; the British folk revival of approximately 1890-1920, and the folk revival of the mid 20th century which started new genres of folk music. But earlier events have also sometimes been referred to as folk revivals. One such earlier one influenced western classical music. Such composers as Percy Grainger, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Béla Bartók, made field recordings or transcriptions of folk singers and musicians. In Spain, Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909) produced piano works reflect his Spanish heritage, including the Suite Iberia (1906–1909). Enrique Granados (1867–1918) composed zarzuela, Spanish light opera, and Danzas Españolas - Spanish Dances. Manuel de Falla (1876–1946) became interested in the cante jondo of Andalusian flamenco, the influence of which can be strongly felt in many of his works, which include Nights in the Gardens of Spain and Siete canciones populares españolas ("Seven Spanish Folksongs", for voice and piano). Composers such as Fernando Sor and Francisco Tarrega established the guitar as Spain's national instrument. Modern Spanish folk artists abound (Mil i Maria, Russian Red, et al.) modernizing whilst respecting the traditions of their forebears. Flamenco grew in popularity through the 20th century, as did northern styles such as the Celtic music of Galicia. French classical composers, from Bizet to Ravel, also drew upon Spanish themes, and distinctive Spanish genres became universally recognised. First British folk revival The "first" British folk revival was a roots revival which occurred approximately 1890 -1920 and was marked by heightened interest in traditional music and its preservation. It arose from earlier developments, perhaps combined with changes in the nature of British identity, led to a much more intensive and academic attempt to record what was seen as a vanishing tradition, and is now usually referred to as the first English or British folk revival. Notable venues It is sometimes claimed that the earliest folk festival was the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival, 1928, in Asheville, North Carolina, founded by Bascom Lamar Lunsford. Sidmouth Festival began in 1954, and Cambridge Folk Festival began in 1965. The Cambridge Folk Festival in Cambridge, England is noted for having a very wide definition of who can be invited as folk musicians. The "club tents" allow attendees to discover large numbers of unknown artists, who, for ten or 15 minutes each, present their work to the festival audience. Stan Rogers is a lasting fixture of the Canadian folk festival Summerfolk, held annually in Owen Sound, Ontario, where the main stage and amphitheater are dedicated as the "Stan Rogers Memorial Canopy". The festival is firmly fixed in tradition, with Rogers` song The Mary Ellen Carter, being sung by all involved, including the audience and a medley of acts at the festival. The Canmore Folk Festival is Alberta's longest running folk music festival. The Feast of the Hunters' Moon in Indiana draws approximately 70,000 visitor per year. Folk music is popular among some audiences today, with folk music clubs meeting to share traditional-style songs, and there are major folk music festivals in many countries, e.g. the Woodford Folk Festival, National Folk Festival and Port Fairy Folk Festival are amongst Australia's largest major annual events, attracting top international folk performers as well as many local artists. This includes the music of Bonnie "Prince" Billy, Devendra Banhart and others. See also * Ethnomusicology * Roud Folk Song Index * World music * Indigenous music References Traditional music *Bayard, Samuel Preston (1950). "Prolegomena to a Study of the Principal Melodic Families of British-American Folksong", Journal of American Folklore pp. 1–44. Reprinted in McAllester, David Park (ed.) (1971) Readings in ethnomusicology New York: Johnson Reprint. *Bearman, C. J. (2000). "Who Were the Folk? The Demography of Cecil Sharp's Somerset Folk Singers." The Historical Journal (September 2000) Vol. 43 No.3 pp. 751–75. *Bevil, Jack Marshall (1984). Centonization and Concordance in the American Southern Uplands Folksong Melody: A Study of the Musical Generative and Transmittive Processes of an Oral Tradition. PhD Thesis, North Texas University, Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International. *Bevil, Jack Marshall (1986). "Scale in Southern Appalachian Folksong: a Reexamination", College Music Symposium Vol. 26, 77-91. *Bevil, Jack Marshall (1987). "A Paradigm of Folktune Preservation and Change Within the Oral Tradition of a Southern Appalachian Community, 1916-1986." Unpublished. Read at the 1987 National Convention of the American Musicological Society, New Orleans. * Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Ballad As Song (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). * Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Singing Tradition of Child's Popular Ballads (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976). * Bronson, Bertrand Harris. The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads, with Their Texts, According to the Extant Records of Great Britain and North America, 4 volumes (Princeton and Berkeley: Princeton University and University of California Presses, 1959, ff.). *Cartwright, Garth (2005). Princes Amongst Men: Journeys with Gypsy Musicians. London: Serpent's Tail. ISBN 1852428775 *Carson, Ciaran (1997). Last Night's Fun: In and Out of Time with Irish Music. North Point Press. ISBN 9780865475151 *Cowdery, James R. (1990). The Melodic Tradition of Ireland. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press. ISBN 9780873384070 *Farsani, Mohsen (2003) Lamentations chez les nomades bakhtiari d'Iran. Paris: Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. *Harker, David (1985). Fakesong: The Manufacture of British 'Folksong', 1700 to the Present Day. Milton Keynes Buckinghamshire; Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335150667 *Jackson, George Pullen (1933). White Spirituals in the Southern Uplands: The Story of the Fasola Folk, Their Songs, Singings, and "Buckwheat Notes". Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Reprinted by Kessinger Publishing (2008) ISBN 9781436690447 * (August 6) * Karpeles, Maud. An Introduction to English Folk Song. 1973. Oxford. Oxford University Press. *Keller, Marcello Sorce (1984). "The Problem of Classification in Folksong Research: A Short History", Folklore Vol. 95, no. 1:100–104. *Mills, Isabelle (1974). The Heart of the Folk Song, Canadian Journal for Traditional Music Vol. 2 * Poladian, Sirvart. "Melodic Contour in Traditional Music," Journal of the International Folk Music Council III (1951), 30-34. * Poladian, Sirvart. "The Problem of Melodic Variation in Folksong," Journal of American Folklore (1942), 204-211. * Rooksby, Rikky, Dr Vic Gammon et al. The Folk Handbook. (2007). Backbeat * Sharp, Cecil. Folk Song: Some Conclusions. 1907. Charles River Books * Sharp, Cecil English Folk Songs from the Southern Appalachians. Collected by Cecil J. Sharp. Ed. Maud Karpeles. 1932. London. Oxford University Press. *Warren-Findley, Jannelle (1980). "Journal of a Field Representative : Charles Seeger and Margaret Valiant" Ethnomusicology, Vol. 24, No. 2 (May, 1980), pp. 169–210 Covering both traditional music and contemporary folk music *Pegg, Carole (2001). "Folk Music". The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie and John Tyrrell. London: Macmillan. *van der Merwe, Peter (1989). Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-316121-4. Notes External links * The channel TV of traditional music * The World and Traditional Music section at the British Library Sound Archive * The Traditional Music in England project, World and Traditional Music section at the British Library Sound Archive * The Mudcat Cafe and Digital Tradition song database * [http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTU0001240 An article on folk music from the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada] * Welsh Folk-Song Society * Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture - Folk Music * The Crooked Road: Heritage music trail-A famous 243-mile experience where folk and bluegrass music originated. * Folk Alley A Non-Profit Listener Supported Folk Music Resource, Streaming online since 2004 * Traditional songs - Folk song lyrics of the world * Ben Gray Lumpkin Digital Folk Music Collection Howard B. Waltz Music Library, University of Colorado Boulder * An online video channel of traditional music * Welsh Ballads Website * * Free scores (songs) at www.traditional-songs.com * www.balladtree.com/folk101/001a_def.htm Definitions of folk music by Hugh Blumenfeld, www.balladtree.com